


Tiger Traps

by Querulousgawks



Category: Calvin & Hobbes
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mystery, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 03:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5811313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been years. They never spoke a word in friendship. He barely scraped at the edges of her memory, hidden in the softer shadows of chalkboards and swingsets: a dubious smell, a hectoring voice, <em>terrible hair.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiger Traps

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from tumblr.

It’s the last year - the last _month-_ of her brutally expensive decade as a peon in an overrated graduate physics department, when she makes the discovery. Her second thought is that she wants to look away. (That first rush of curiosity, she’s surprised to discover, is as strong as ever.) It’s - unbelievable, indescribable. Dangerous to everyone she knows. Inconveniently impossible to explain to everyone she knows. Except - maybe -

She sets it aside, finishes the paperwork, and graduates. The government didn’t loan her all this money for nothing. If her thesis suddenly seems incomplete, no one can tell from her defense of it; she does everything she’s supposed to do, like always. And then she goes looking.

It’s been years. They never spoke a word in friendship. He barely scraped at the edges of her memory, hidden in the softer shadows of chalkboards and swingsets: a dubious smell, a hectoring voice,  _terrible hair._

No one would ever think of hurting him to get to her. And if something did catch up with him - well, call it karma. There were a lot of worms and iceballs in those dim memories, too. She asks her mother, offhanded, if she remembered the family…and whatever happened to…? She gets a sharp look, a reference to _that little shit,_ and an address. There were no shadows in her mother’s memory – nothing dared to hide.

He’ll believe her, she reminds herself as she rings the bell, and he won’t turn it down. Nobody changes that much. Still, she steps away from the door, just out of view of whatever will come barreling through it. She wants to see him before he sees her.

He's  _enormous,_ first of all. (She’d always been taller, sturdier, standing up straight at the bus stop, reaching with her ninety-degree creases and arrow-sharp pencils for a way out of the well of childhood.)

He smells better, too, even clearly just woken up, slouching in a sloppy t-shirt and astonishingly wrinkled pajama pants. (And thank god. If she had caught that tuna-and-cocoa-puffs smell again after twenty years, she might have just turned around and left her only option baffled on his doorstep.)

His hair is  _exactly the same,_  and it’s so unexpected she bursts out laughing. 

Speaking of baffled, now he looks downright lost, especially when she just gestures toward his head, still cackling, and gasps, “How does it  _do_ that? ” It’s been a long week, but he doesn’t know that, yet. 

One hand comes up to smooth down the spikes as he says, “It’s a little early for my blowout, lady.” His tone hovers between placating - there’s a nutball on his doorstep, after all - and defensive, with the bite she remembers.It makes her grin, forget she’s here out of desperation.

 _“Lady,_ Calvin, really? Is this 1945?" 

His jaw drops, and his eyes cloud with a satisfying hint of alarm - all too satisfying, she’s on a mission here, and it’s not settling playground scores - before they clear, sharpen. _"Susie?"_

"Yeah." Mission, right. Recognition was the first step. Now she just had to accomplish the second: get them both out of sight. "Listen, I’m sorry about the hair, you look great, it’s been a while, and I hate to spring this on you, but - I have some questions.”

His hand scrubs over his head a couple of times, then across his face.  "Oh…kay?“

"About Hobbes.”

He was hovering between a scowl and a smile throughout this whole exchange, but at the name his face goes dead still, one hand frozen where it had just gripped his t-shirt collar. 

He doesn’t laugh - which says it all, really, right? He does back up, hesitate, stare regretfully for a second at his other hand on the doorknob, like it’s deciding for him. Then he swings it wide open. 

“Come on in, Derkins.”


End file.
